page_title: British and American keyboards
section_title: Other keyboard layouts
hierarchical_section_title: British and American keyboards / Other keyboard layouts
caption_attribution_description: English: English United Kingdom Extended Keyboard under Ubuntu
context_page_description: There are two major English language computer keyboard layouts, the United States layout and the United Kingdom layout defined in BS 4822. Both are QWERTY layouts. Users in the United States do not frequently need to make use of the £ and € currency symbols, which are common needs in the United Kingdom and Ireland, although the $ symbol is also provided as standard on UK and Irish keyboards. In commonwealth countries such as Australia, Canada, Pakistan, India, and New Zealand, the US keyboard is commonly used.
context_section_description: Other operating systems can optionally re-map the keyboard layout or have different modifier keys (for example the Amiga keyboard has "A" modifier keys and BBC Micro or Acorn keyboards often had a "Shift Lock" as well as a "Caps Lock").
  Under Unix/Linux the "Windows" key is often called the "Super" key and can be re-mapped by users for specific functionality but in most programs by default does nothing.
  Some older Unix/Linux software, such as Emacs, uses the left Alt key as a "Meta" key, which harks back to older MIT or LISP computers.
  Chrome OS uses the US and UK Windows layouts, except that the Caps-Lock key is labelled with a magnifying glass (🔍) and by default acts as a web search key (there is an option in Settings to revert it to convention). The function-key row is also differently labelled. The UK-extended layout for Chrome OS is provided by a Chrome add-on, and provides ready access to a substantially greater (than Windows) repertoire of precomposed characters for western, central and eastern European (Latin alphabet) languages.
caption: United Kingdom Extended Keyboard Layout for Linux
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